In flying, the angle of attack is the difference between your pitch attitude and your flight path. Your plane’s nose is typically slightly elevated into the wind, creating lift with smooth airflow over the wing and nominal drag. But if you raise your nose too high, airflow disruption becomes too great. You stall — then your plane drops like a rock. Get my drift?
Right now, Bluesky’s angle of attack is pitch perfect. X’s, on the other hand, is so stubbornly cocked that its lift is gone. In the latter scenario, bad pilots will crash their planes. And the pilots helming Bluesky (Jay Graber) and X (Elon Musk) really couldn’t be more different. You don’t have to understand the physics of aviation to see their platforms are responding accordingly.
Businesses focused on the U.S. market should pay attention to quality and quantity curves in the coming months when evaluating social media’s soaring blue butterfly, Bluesky — as well as X’s grip, TikTok’s global fate and the overall media transformation carrying news influencers across social/digital platforms.
There are 336 million people in the United States. Consider 2024 figures that purport to show monthly active users on major social media platforms in this country alone:
- Facebook: 194 million
- Instagram: 170 million
- TikTok: 121 million
- X: 106 million
- Threads: 30 million
- Reddit: 26 million
On Nov. 14, Bluesky crossed the 15 million user mark worldwide; on Nov. 18, that figure rose to 19 million. It’s now over 20 million. Reports on the percentage of its monthly active users in the United States are changing fast because growth is in motion, but in a short time that’s risen in the 24% to 44% range. That means Bluesky has roughly between 4.6 to 8.8 million active users in the U.S. — generously, about 8% of X’s active U.S. user base.
Doesn’t sound like much? The thing is, Bluesky is adding as many as a million users a day. It’s now No. 1 in the U.S. iPhone App Store’s free app section — beating out ChatGPT. Whether it can keep up such a breakneck viral pace remains to be seen, but there’s more to the story of its momentum. Even before the election, new data was also showing that X is losing users in the U.S. and U.K. And the motivations and conditions surrounding Bluesky’s growth appear, at least in part, different from what spun out Threads.
Let’s take a closer look at what businesses should know.
Bluesky’s mission, your choice
Bluesky’s orientation thread begins like this: 👋Bluesky is an open social network that gives creators independence from platforms, developers the freedom to build and users a choice in their experience. We’re so excited to have you here! Graber’s LinkedIn headlines with nuggets like “We‘re making social a playground again. Join us!,” “Completely open APIs,” “Control your scroll with over 25k custom feeds,” and “Own your identity — use your domain as your handle.”
Decentralization makes that freedom and choice possible. Earlier this year, Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief at The Verge, wrote, “Jay makes a convincing argument that decentralization — the idea that you should be able to take your username and following to different servers as you wish — is the future.” She explains: “the core idea is that no single company — or individual billionaire — can amass too much power and control over our social networks and the conversations that happen on them.”
Bluesky relies on the AT Protocol for this, a communication protocol for decentralized social networking. Users still share short posts with messages, images and videos that appear in a Twitter-like feed, but the protocol devolves control, “so Bluesky users can pick their own moderation systems and recommendation algorithms” in a “marketplace of algorithms.” Starter packs enable users to become part of many communities fast. Don’t like what’s there? Compose your own user experience.
In Bluesky’s world, no Musk on X and no Trump on Truth Social can own the bully pulpit — forcing staff to prioritize their tweets and questionable content — because users have much greater control over the network, their data and the algorithms impacting their experience. Don’t want to be bombarded with fascist mantras or pornographic images next to a Visa ad? You won’t be.
No one’s abusing or selling your data
In Bluesky’s user-first vision, a few for-profit corporations aren’t empowering unverified accounts and data-hungry bots, reinstating banned users, diluting the block function, forcing lawsuits to proceed in one north Texas courtroom, and reserving “the right to use tweets to train AI models — whether [users] opt out or not.” In fact, in mid-November Bluesky explicitly promised that, unlike X and other platforms, “it wouldn’t leverage users’ content to train large language models.” As of late October, we also know that “the Bluesky app and the AT Protocol do not use blockchains or cryptocurrency, and […] will not hyperfinancialize the social experience (through tokens, crypto trading, NFTs, etc.).”
Perhaps the most systemically rebellious act of all is that Bluesky isn’t monetizing its users’ data. Specifically, it won’t sell users’ data for ads.
This is a key way in which Bluesky differs from Threads, which, according to Wired, lists 14 categories of data that “may be collected and linked to your identity,” and which, like other Meta-owned apps, monetizes data “by selling targeted ads and personalized marketing.”
Instead, Bluesky tells us, while keeping its major features free for users, it is “exploring other ways to monetize its platform,” such as:
- Custom domains – Users can pay for a custom domain to personalize their handle.
- Subscription service – This service will offer premium features like higher-quality video uploads and profile customizations, but will not influence post visibility or grant a “verified” badge.
- Creator monetization – Creators can monetize through developer-created content, such as custom feeds. Bluesky will take a small cut of the revenue.
On these points, brands will want to pay close attention as new ways to attract consumers and new creator relationships emerge. We already know people will pay to see no ads on streaming services like Netflix. These new forms of monetization mark a huge opportunity for Bluesky newsfeeds to stay interesting and valuable — whereas, other platforms have their hands tied behind their backs with ad revenue such an integral part of their ecosystem.
Open-minded vibe vs. strong-man propaganda
Disillusioned with propaganda and right-wing partisanship on X, many Americans (including scores of celebrities and Swifties) have been leaving X for Bluesky specifically. They not only identified with Harris’ campaign, but what they deem it stood for: a fairer, more equal, more just and more compassionate world for all people. It’s impossible to hide that X has become a breeding ground for far-right activism.
The extremism isn’t good for business either. Prominent brands have departed X (Target, UnitedHealth Group, Best Buy, 3M, Balenciaga, Eli Lilly, The Guardian, NPR, Playbill, etc.) or suspended ads (Disney, Apple, IBM, Paramount, Comcast, etc.) because they ran alongside hate content, including pro-Nazi posts.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an NYU historian with 250,000 followers on X and who picked up 21,000 followers on her first Bluesky day last week, was quoted by The Guardian summing up the thoughts of many: “I am still on X, but after January, when X could be owned by a de facto member of the Trump administration, its functions as a Trump propaganda outlet and far-right radicalization machine could be accelerated.”
And that strong-man bad vibe may, in fact, keep pushing the Xodus flight to Bluesky. Upcoming events like the second mass Women’s March on Jan. 18, the inauguration itself, extremist cabinet appointments and new controversial actions will spur a desire in many to “do something.” Social media rebellion is easy. Bluesky’s “anti-toxicity” enables users to hide replies and “detach” quote posts, with more safeguards promised.
Not least, consider the 33-year old woman leading Bluesky, Lantian “Jay” Graber, a charismatic figure and seemingly the anti-Musk. Graber said in Forbes that her mother named her Lantian “because she wanted me to have boundless freedom. The opportunities she didn’t have.”
This is the future she wants for us. Now is the time to think outside the box and figure out how your brand might align with pursuit of a world like that, with an appeal to youth who want a way forward and with a user-first plane of tech existence.
Reserve your company username on Bluesky … and keep your eye on TikTok
While you don’t necessarily need a presence on Bluesky this second, we do recommend creating an account and securing your company username now. We’ve got ours. It’s an easy way to protect your brand, keep company social handles consistent across all platforms and familiarize yourself with new features of decentralization without crypto. You don’t need to post, but do lock it down.
Follow these steps to reserve your username:
- Visit bsky.app and create an account.
- Secure your username, ideally, the same one you use everywhere else.
If you need any help or have questions, let Bospar know. With a full suite of modern social media capabilities, we’re happy to walk you through nuts and bolts and higher-level strategy for a new era.
We’ll leave you with a few parting words about another storm brewing on the digital horizon that we recommend you keep an eye on: TikTok’s fate.
Whoever controls TikTok will control a massive piece of America’s attention. Trump’s changing perspective on TikTok’s sale likely has everything to do with Musk and friends trying to strategize an advantage with that platform. Its new $300-billion valuation could be a sign different camps are prepping to fight for it. If Bytedance/China sells, it’s a bargaining chip for the Trump administration and could stack odds in favor of centralized giants — a move that may push even more Americans to find alternatives.
